This morning, feeling aimless and heavy with thoughts, I pulled my rose-patterned box out from under my bed and started to read, hoping to find an inroad to my writing voice. What I found instead surprised me: a deep and clear understanding that I'm done processing those years, done communing with the girl I once was, done with that chapter of my life. It is time to close the door.
The thing is, I'm not ending the journey out of frustration or exasperation, but out of the calm serenity of closure I've nurtured here. I have honored those years and the people in them and, in doing so, discovered myself standing tall atop the darkness of my twenties. I wasn't sure what I'd find looking back into my troubled and recovering mind, but I'm leaving the process behind knowing that I not only survived anorexia, I learned and changed and grew into someone with a full and challenging and beautiful inner life. I am, quite simply, not a sick young girl anymore.
I contacted a friend while in the midst of making this discovery. I can't write, I said, and explained that I'd gone back to re-read my journals and couldn't connect to or channel the young writer anymore. And then I understood: I feel like I've grown up, I said, it's time to move on.
I realize now I've been combing through those years, really feeling them again, so that I'd eventually reach the day when I could finally lay them to rest. Attracting and embracing change over the last couple of years while shedding the tight, cracking skin of my twenties, and experiencing the vast and frightening overhaul of a new life lived in a new place, has been nothing short of metamorphic. My skin is still raw and fresh.
It is true, though, that in looking back to see the heavy door of my past click shut, I am unsure where to turn. I know that I am well into a new chapter of my life, but it doesn't have roots deep enough to stabilize me during times of extreme doubt. I still awaken to quick moments of haziness and plan my day as if I lived elsewhere. I still fumble through feelings of displacement which seem exciting during bursts of exploration but terrifying and exhausting during stretches of loneliness and despair.
And yet...I've fallen in love with this place and that in and of itself is a soft place to land.
I've learned, in imparting these years of my story, that we all share the same soulful unrest that plagues me at times -- we've all got bundles of life tied to our backs that feel either heavy or weightless depending upon the slope of the ground beneath our feet. We all get tangled up in the minutia of daily life, creating a narrative that makes sense and feels safe in its re-telling, while days tick by and etch their presence onto our hands and memories, reminding us, when we dare look ourselves full in the face, that time is marching on.
Walking Adela to kindergarten the other day and feeling her quick kiss on my cheek and tiny hand slip out of mine as we reached the playground, I realized that there is nothing I can do or change or think or say to fix these moments in time. No amount of intelligent, responsible life-construction or determination will make time stand still. My daughter's childhood is like a beautiful limitless sky, and though I've come to understand that clouds and wind and rain blow through every once in a while marring the blue, I was never so aware of the sun traveling in its own finite arc until now. This one perfect, glorious day won't last forever.
And so, as if braiding my life, I pick up another strand of change and weave it in.
A few weeks ago, on the eve of this wrenching set of discoveries, I found myself blisteringly angry. Sitting alone in my room late one night I told the universe exactly what I thought of it through heaving sobs and shallow breath, hoping to make sense of my confusion. I didn't realize at the time that grief was erupting noisily around me and I was trying to muffle it with fury. Everything was changing right before my very eyes and what I knew to be solid and true was mere shadow in the light: my daughter's youth, my sense of self...
Change is extremely painful, especially change that ruptures within, and I tend to follow a very distinct pattern when a particular journey such as a relationship or job is ending: shock, blame, anger, withdrawal, grief, and, finally, acceptance. Completely unaware of my position within the continuum of change, I have spent some time balancing on each of these stepping stones over the last couple of months, sometimes going backward then forward again. As the days blur hastily by, blame simply feels like blame rather than the bookend of shock or the precursor to anger. Grief just feel like grief, not the resting place of withdrawl nor the tunnel through to acceptance. Real change doesn't happen overnight, but rather through this series of transitions, the next step presenting itself only when it is truly time to move on. Acceptance doesn't come until anger has crashed, foamed and bubbled in silence, and receded with grief.
Emerging from my own confusion and finding a bit of reflection, I am happy I spent this past year sifting and sorting through the contents of my rose-patterned box. I am proud that I surrendered to those wretched and shameful memories for a time, understanding their nuances and how they affect my life. Honestly, I am astonished to discover that the wayward soul I once was still has the strength to power me through challenging times. And, I am relieved to discover that I don't have to cast out the lost little girl who starved herself in order to shed her shame...I'm privileged to love and live with both.
This year, as I navigated through one kind of grief, I said goodbye to a friend whose life was cut far too short. In one of our last conversations, she shared with me some of the challenges she saw before her and how she planned to deal with them. After her death, I reeled for weeks trying to understand how a woman and mother whose work seemed so unfinished could be gone. It seemed an ugly injustice to lose someone with plans and hope...until I accepted that our lives are present and vital while we're here and that death doesn't diminish the importance of the love and lessons we leave behind. My friend will not live through the challenges and blessings she foresaw, but that doesn't mean I should stop looking ahead.
I know in leaving this subject behind for now that I have mountains and oceans of work left to do. If I'm lucky, I'll still be climbing and sailing throughout all the days of my life. I have lists and lists of unfinished business and unanswered questions tucked away in my mind, ready for the next phase of exploration. The brilliance of being alive is getting an infinite number of chances to crack open life's little riddles while the sun still travels through the sky.
Georgia O'Keefe once wrote to a friend, "I see my little world as something that I am in - something that I play in. It is inevitable to me. But I never get over being surprised that it means something to anyone else."
Thank you for making it safe to share this tender piece of my story with you.
~ Katie
Quote from Georgia O'Keefe by Roxana Robinson, 1989, p. 454
